OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — A preliminary report of Oktibbeha County Lake Dam improvements shows a potential cost estimate of over $15 million, despite there being no erosion in the dam’s core.
That’s almost twice the $8 million for full dam repairs Prichard Engineering estimated in January 2020 after it was suspected the dam was in imminent danger of breaching.
The Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors contracted with Flowood-based Pickering Engineering Firm, a company included in larger engineering firm Mississippi Engineering Group, in July 2021 to conduct an investigation on the status of the dam. MEG subcontracted with Starkville-based Burns Cooley Dennis Waggoner Engineering to conduct a geotechnical analysis of the dam, and Waggoner Engineering, also a part of MEG, is conducting the cost estimate for the dam.
The board met in shifts on Thursday with Pickering Firm Director of Special Projects Jeff Ballweber, Waggoner Engineering Chief Technical Officer Bill McDonald and Burns Cooley Dennis Geotechnical Engineer Eddie Templeton Thursday to discuss MEG’s preliminary report of its findings.
First the group met with Orlando Trainer and Joe Williams, supervisors for Districts 2 and 5, respectively. Later Thursday morning, they met with District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard and board president Bricklee Miller, who represents District 4. John Montgomery, of District 1, did not participate in either meeting.
While a reporter for The Dispatch was invited to attend the meetings, and did attend the second one, the meeting was not noticed publicly and no other members of the public attended.
McDonald said he wanted to meet with the board before an official public meeting to gain opinions and insight from the supervisors in case any changes or improvements need to be made to the report.
“We haven’t issued it to (the board) as the final product, but once we do that, it becomes public knowledge,” McDonald said. “We typically keep things in draft form until we hear revisions, changes we need to make, and then we will issue the final report.”
However, the state Ethics Commission ruled in 2014 that “rolling quorums” — where two or three members of a public body meet separately to discuss the same issue behind closed doors — violate the Mississippi Open Meetings Act. In that case, a Dispatch reporter filed a complaint against the city of Columbus after the council met in non-quorum shifts to discuss issues related to economic development and Trotter Convention Center.
The complaint and Ethics Commission decision, held up in court.
After learning about the meetings on Wednesday, The Dispatch contacted board of supervisors attorney Rob Roberson, who is also a state legislator, and noted the decisions related to rolling quorums. Roberson said today that the reason the board met was so each supervisor could have their questions answered.
“Having a smaller group like that makes it easier to ask questions,” Roberson said. “It was very unofficial. The engineering group that came made it where the supervisors could ask questions, and they were answered.”
The Dispatch plans to file an open meetings complaint with the Ethics Commission in this matter.
The dam
The Mississippi Department of Environment Quality has deemed the dam a high hazard dam that needs to see repairs made in the near future, outlining the foremost improvements, such as redoing the slope of the dam, that would bring the dam up to standard.
MEG’s conceptual opinion probable cost, which would accommodate for a full-flood event, amounted to $15,750,000, but McDonald said this is based on a higher criteria than what MDEQ has established.
County engineer Clyde Pritchard conducted an analysis of the dam in spring 2020, when he estimated needed repairs of $8 million.
Miller asked Thursday if any other solutions could be implemented because people in her district have expressed they do not want to spend that amount of money to completely fix the dam.
“I think the cost to modify it is huge, especially when we were told to replace the whole thing, it would cost around $10 million,” Miller said.
McDonald said the county could choose to have a dry dam if that is what is preferred, meaning there would be a controlled breach by permanently maintaining the lake without water. The dam would no longer function as a permanent impoundment. Another option would be to raise the dam’s elevation, McDonald said, which would in turn cause the county to rebuild the road surrounding the lake.
The report showed no potential backward internal erosion, water seeping through the dam, because the dam is made of clay. Templeton said the volume of water that moves through the dam is low because water does not seep through clay very well.
“There’s really not any possibility of backward water erosion failure of the dam,” Templeton said. “… There is through seepage. I don’t doubt that there are wet spots down here at times. What I’m saying, there really is no potential (for backward erosion), but based on the geology and what I saw in the embankment where we sampled it, I think there is really no potential.”
While the report showed no potential erosion, Pritchard’s 2020 report identified one cavity in the dam’s core that was hollow.
Howard, whose district includes the lake, asked Templeton why his company did not analyze the particular area that previously appeared to have erosion because that one spot could cause a breach in the entire dam.
“The drilling was not in that spot,” Howard said. “The drilling was elsewhere. If we are talking about a hollow spot, it could be confined to one particular area. Why wouldn’t you have drilled there and say, ‘Okay, we drilled right there, and we didn’t find anything?’”
Templeton responded that he was hired to evaluate the overall structure of the dam, not specific portions of the dam where there were reported cavities.
The county received an initial report in November that said animals caused burrows in the dam’s core, but the report presented Thursday called these areas “sinkholes.” Miller questioned why the wording was changed, to which Templeton said sinkhole is just a phrase engineers use, but understands that can be confusing for some people since the burrows were related to beaver activity.
“What it had appeared to me was where beavers had excavated back into the bank and eventually above the upstream which had collapsed,” Templeton said.
Howard questioned if these areas were truly caused by animal interactions and said he thinks the soil is simply leaving the dam.
“A couple of them look like they’re from a beaver, but a couple of them, based on my knowledge and observation and knowing what beavers look like and what they do, maybe not,” Howard said.
MEG will present the final report and cost estimates at the board’s regular meeting Feb. 21.
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